The management of USS over the past few years has been atrocious. Just how damaging can be seen from a thread produced yesterday on twitter, a thread that suggests that the new management is learning a little about member management.
The scheme’s 2023 valuation is now, to all intents and purposes, complete and lower contribution rates will be introduced from 1 January 2024.
We will be emailing members with more details.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
The Joint Negotiating Committee and the Trustee Board met this week to consider responses to the employer-led consultation with affected employees & representatives. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, and no modifications were made: https://t.co/Gk6wVVyJXK
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
The formal valuation paperwork – the official Actuarial Valuation Report, the Statement of Funding Principles and the Schedule of Contributions – will be filed with The Pensions Regulator, and published on the USS website in the coming days.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
The previous rancour between employer, member and the USS is gone. There is now clarity of purpose and celerity of action
Deeds of amendment for the improved benefits set out in the employer-led consultation, and the one-off uplift to benefits earned between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2024, are on course to be completed in February 2024 and implemented from 1 April 2024.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
Benefits that were needlessly taken away, with such terrible consequences for industrial relations (and scheme membership) are now being restored to a clear time-table.
As much as a fifth of eligible members opt out of the scheme altogether, and the most common reason for doing so is affordability.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
Whether from disillusionment with the scheme’s VFM or because of unaffordability as a result of the rising cost of living, one in five potential members are not currently in the USS. Among a highly literate audience , this is hard to credit.
We hope member contribution rates coming down (from 9.8% of salary to 6.1%, from 1 January ’24) will prompt people to look at whether the scheme now works for them. They may also benefit from the one-off uplift if they join / re-join by 31 March ’24: https://t.co/UsArVvItxn
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
With the scheme reporting a healthy surplus and positive post-valuation experience, lowering contribution rates and improving benefits, it’s a positive backdrop for USS as we enter the 50th anniversary year of its establishment.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
That it has been saved from that fate, is to a large degree to do with a few pension experts (not me) and many who have become pension experts over the past few years. The UCU has harnessed this expertise and mobilised it against powerful vested interests that could not see the longer term but became ensnarled in local issues to do with accounting and financial economics.
What is important , going forward, is that lessons are learned. The USS must be allowed to run on for generations to come and be an example to other schemes about what can be done with scale , good management and good governance.
The damage that has been done to the reputation of pensions among those one in five eligible staff who are not currently members of the scheme, can be undone, though they may miss further accrual until they feel it is safe and affordable to go back in the water.
Pension strikes must be a thing of the past. Quite apart from the impact on their education, a generation of students have gone to university and found that pensions equate to disruption and disharmony. This is shocking.
Finally, the Pensions Regulator can redeploy the resource it had to devote to this scheme, because of the futile rowing over pseudo-valuations that created all the trouble. The member’s interest have not been served well, nor the employer’s nor indeed the image of pensions. This has been a sorry regulatory episode.
But let’s close the book on this , with two tweets , I didn’t expect I would read, but am most happy to publish.
We want to thank UCU and UUK for the positive and collaborative approach they have taken to the 2023 valuation. This has been fundamental to us being able to introduce these changes as quickly as possible.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
We will look to carry that momentum and spirit through to longer term discussions on how we can achieve greater stability – be that in the funding position, the benefit structure, and/or the required contribution rate.
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— USS (@USSpensions) December 20, 2023
The great universities of this country rank at the very top of the world lists of educational institutions, many have been with us for over 500 years. It seemed in 2017 , inconceivable that their covenant could not support the payment of pensions to their teaching staff.
I am very pleased that common sense has prevailed and that we have a pension scheme fit for the teaching staff that make these institutions world-renowned.
